True crimes in Minnesota led Sheila Potocnik to examine cold cases

“Sheila is here to give me another opinion of my broken heart,” said Patty Brunn, who asked Potocnik to examine the death of her 23-year-old son Joseph Brunn, who had drowned in Mississippi a decade ago after he was drunk in an Otseego, Minn. Like many customers, Brunn Potocnik was looking for both her professional know -how and for her empathy and knew that she was a mother who would understand the depth of her loss.

Potocnik knows only too well how pain to experience the traumatic death of a loved one. And Antonios murder was not the first time that her family had lived the nightmare.

Potocnik and her older sister Laura Dueuses grew up in South Minneapolis and were inseparable.

As a high-school-school, DimeUles developed a drug addiction that led to a legislator, says Potocnik. But she remained a bubbling, happy presence and had worked on getting her life on a better track.

On November 6, 2005, the 33-year-old Demeules was beaten and strangled along a gravel road near Northfield. A man had driven his excavator to a neighbor when he discovered her bare body on the edge of a field.

The Rice County Sheriff examined together with the Bureau of Criminal Chroenesion (BCA) and the Minneapolis police. Potocnik was looking for an advertising table to look for tips near the house on East Lake Street, where Demeulen were recently seen. She knocked on doors and distributed flyers.